Angling for subscriptions

Viewers who like your content will come back and watch more, but viewers who love your content will want to subscribe. Why not? When you keep reaching for the same print magazine whenever you see it, eventually you just subscribe to it so that it regularly comes to the mailbox at your front door. YouTube offers repeat viewers of your channel the same option. Basically, all they have to do is click the Subscribe button, as shown in Figure 1-5, on your channel’s home page.

After viewers subscribe to your channel, you have to make it worth their while to view it or else they’ll unsubscribe faster than you can say “Jack Nicholson.” Here’s what “making it worth their while” entails:

» Stay in touch with subscribers. According to YouTube, viewers subscribe to millions of channels every day, so it’s important to stay in touch if you want to stay uppermost in their minds.

Suggest to your viewers that they follow you on social media so that you can let them know when new content is available. This strategy helps your audience grow as you amass a devoted fan base.

FIGURE 1-5:

The Subscribe button lets viewers become subscribers with a single click.

» Actively upload videos. It’s diffi       to imagine a television station maintain- ing viewers if it doesn’t add new programs. Even if it were all Seinfeld all the time, chances are good that viewers would eventually drift off to something

else. Well, the same concept applies for your YouTube channel. If you don’t upload new video content, you’ll lose the interest of your subscriber base. The takeaway here? Always provide new content.

» Pay close attention to tagging. When you tag a video, you categorize it after

uploading it to YouTube. When a video is properly identifi     it increases the possibility of someone else fi                                             it, and that extends to future subscribers.